Agenda item

Councillor Bailey asked Councillor Jill Bayford the following question:

"I have become increasingly aware of the plight of people trying desperately to find a place to rent in Thanet. I even know of a lady in her eighties in a desperate situation who has been issued a Section 21 notice but cannot find anywhere to rent so is temporarily staying with her brother. 

There currently seems to be a real issue around the lack of available rental property and this unavailability seems to be exacerbated, at least in part, by the proliferation of AirBnBs.

A shortage of rental properties will also put more pressure on this Authority in terms of having to find additional temporary accommodation to house people so this is a serious problem that has ramifications for the Council.

I would like to ask, what is this council doing, or what power does it have - perhaps through the review of the Local Plan, to address this issue?

Do we actually know how many Airbnbs there are in the district?

Is there a local requirement to register Airbnbs with this authority? If not, should there be?”

Councillor Jill Bayford responded with the following points:

• The Council’s adopted Local Plan included an assumption that 6.3% of the local housing stock were second homes, which potentially included holiday lets, and the housing requirements set out in the plan took this into account. This equated to around 4,000 dwellings.
• The Local Plan also had policies that both supported the retention of residential dwellings (Policy HO22), and supported the provision of self-catering accommodation as part of the local tourism industry (Policy E08).  The intention of Policy HO22 was to protect the existing housing supply.  There were some caveats, of which one was tourism use, but only where it met certain policy criteria.
• In the event that planning permission was required for a holiday let of this kind, the policies in the adopted Plan were probably sufficient.  However, Policy H022 could only be applied when there was a material change of use of a dwelling.
• In a significant number of cases it was unlikely that there would be a material change of use from a residential dwelling to a holiday let.  For example where a whole dwelling was let to a single family for their holiday.  However the Council considered all planning enforcement complaints in relation to short-term accommodation, to assess whether a change of use had occurred, and looked at the specific factors in each case.
• Any new local planning policy in relation to holiday letting, would need to be based upon robust evidence about the impact on the supply and affordability of local homes to meet locally identified needs. 
• There was no current requirement to register an AirBnB, or any other form of holiday let, not including hotels and HMO’s that were covered by different legislation, with the local council.  As a result, the Council did not hold definitive figures, however AirBnB have indicated that their platform had up to 1,316 listed properties.  It was not clear whether these were whole dwellings or parts of a dwelling.  A 2019 survey, completed by Visit Kent identified 1,089 active AirBnB rentals in Thanet.  This suggested that the recent trend in people holidaying in the UK, following the COVID-19 pandemic had fuelled a rise in the number of AirBnB’s locally.
• The mandatory registration or the effective planning control of holiday lets would require new national legislation or regulation.  A number of national organisations (B&B Association, Tourism Alliance etc) had been lobbying for change and have asked for a registration scheme to be introduced.  As part of the Government's Tourism Recovery Plan one of the key initiatives was to launch a consultation on the introduction of a Tourism Accommodation Registration scheme.
• The Council was committed to determining the impact of AirBnB’s on the residential market in Thanet, but this should be weighed against the value of the visitors economy which supported local employment.

Councillor Bailey followed up her question by asking if the Council had a response to the recently published white paper from Professor Novelli.

Councillor Jill Bayford responded that the white paper was looking at national registration of AirBnB’s, this would be a move supported by the Council.